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I’m not printing this to bring a ton of mockery down on Gerald, I just can’t believe the misfortune he had as far as timing.

Item No. 1:

Commenter Gerald, in the comments below:

Last time I checked, CAR is in the mushy middle of ticket revenue where a lot of teams reside. The other blogger cited disgraced data from the Team Marketing Report. You and i have now looked at their ticket prices directly. Higher prices for some, lower for others, many more suites in CAR, CAR controls their arena. There is this idea among the Oilogosphere (do i have that right?) that the Oil rake in the cash and are an elite revenue team. I believe you guys are sadly mistaken…

…the restraints were put in place to save teams like the Oilers just as much as southern teams (heresy!! Burn him!!!”)

Item No. 2:

Hurricanes Hockey LP generated total revenue of $65 million for the nine-month period that ended March 31, 2010. That was a 5.8 percent decline from the same period in the previous season, when the Canes made the playoffs and advanced all the way to the conference finals.

There was an interesting little table in that story, which I’m including here. I think the revenue sharing thing is a bit misleading - I suspect that the ‘Canes got about $10MM in shared revenue and $13MM in revenue sharing. That sort of implies that they’re getting a full share of revenue sharing, which strikes me as a bit unusual - my recollection is that they weren’t entitled to that in 2008-09 because they didn’t make the revenue growth goals and they were down last year, although I might be thinking of 2007-08; I remember one of those MacLean-Bettman interviews where the US teams were whining about the Canadian dollar screwing up the revenue sharing program. My recollection is that the league has some discretion there - I’d have to do some more research to check out whether or not that’s actually the case.

Item No. 3:

“We have a $3-billion industry (NHL), we’re a $120-million business and there are no borders in our business.”
-Alan Watt, August 24, 2010

I honestly don’t know how you can arrive at the conclusion that Gerald arrived at that the Oilers are a poor team. The annual revenue sharing payments alone should dispel that. Of course, I don’t know how guys who own a $120MM business in a league with a $58MM salary cap and a salary range premised on the idea that teams shoud be able to spend 57% of their revenues on salaries can go to City Council and say that the team isn’t viable. I also don’t understand why you’d say you have a $120MM business while you’re simultaneously pleading poverty. Usually even the really poorly run teams know how to present a certain image when they’re asking for a handout. The Oilers can’t even do that properly. As for Gerald, well, it’s like the universe was conspiring against him on this point.

Hat tip to Julian and Derek Zona for the links in the comments.

If Brian Burke wasn’t the GM of the Maple Leafs, Bleacher Report would pass on this:

In no other sport do the players, the management, the owners and the fans treat The Game with such respect. That’s what they call it, too — The Game. And everyone’s actions are still guided by what’s good for the game.

2004-05 lockout? Good for the game. Six game mini-packs to watch the defending worst team in the NHL that cost more than $100 per game? Good for the game. Making threats that, if you aren’t given a few hundred million dollars, your hockey team located in the heartland of hockey is no longer viable? Good for the game.

Alternate theory: everyone’s motives are a mix of what’s good for the game (stronger with people who have an emotional connection to hockey) and what’s good for the individual. What’s good for the individual is a mix of things that differs from individual to individual. For Burke’s employer, it’s the sheer thrill of exceeding the projected returns on the quarterly financial statements. For other owners, it will be a mix of financial and on-ice success.

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Larry Brooks had quite the column the other day, although I don’t really get why he calls himself “Slap Shots”:

Slap Shots has been told by several sources that the NHL likely is to present a new version of the hard cap next time around where what has been the midpoint will actually become the ceiling and in which the band between high and low will be as narrow as the low-revenue, floor-hovering teams will permit.

In other words, instead of the cap this season being $59.4M based upon a $51.4M midpoint, the cap itself would be $51.4M.

But wait, it would be significantly lower than that, even, because the league is believed prepared to demand that the players’ percentage of the gross be reduced from 57 percent to 50-52 percent, with all one-way contracts within an organization counting against the cap.

This in addition to strict term limits on contracts, controls relating to front-loading; and changes in the manner cap charges are calculated on multi-year deals. Plus, who knows what other give-backs?

The league will attempt to divide the union by pointing out that a cap calculated this way would eliminate escrow even as it would dramatically drive down payroll on about half the league’s clubs that will spend to the cap this season.

…

If this is what the players have, if their repose in the face of a $102M defeat is an indication, if their inability to attract the best and the brightest to their cause is a reflection of how they are perceived by the outside world, they might as well bend over now and save everyone the aggravation in two years.

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Bruce Arthur came up with a pretty good question tonight: why isn’t the CBA just one paragraph that reads, “Whatever Gary says”? I’m not sure that it’s quite that bad but reading Richard Bloch’s decision in the Kovalchuk arbitration, it does seem that Bloch has decided that the NHL has an awful lot of leeway. I’ll write some more about it later this week but I’m at least wavering in my conclusion that this type of deal is permissible. I have trouble with some of Bloch’s reasoning; specifically, his conclusion that this kind of deal defeats the intent of the Team Payroll System when it’s permissible according to that but it’s a pretty compelling argument taken as a whole, I think.

What does that mean? Well, if Bloch is right, it means that the NHLPA and the NHL have an agreement that permits the NHL to make decisions according to some vague, unspecified criteria. It also means that other contracts, like those signed by Luongo and Hossa, are open to league review and challenge. Heck, the CBA contains a provision that permits the NHL to order that games won by a team circumventing the CBA be forfeited; maybe Chicago didn’t win the Stanley Cup. Of course, Bloch names Pronger’s deal as suspect as well. So it couldn’t be Philadelphia. San Jose or Montreal might be your 2009-10 Stanley Cup Champions. I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.

Every so often on Twitter, I give the gears to Dan Tencer, who hosts a radio show that fills the time whenever the Oilers don’t need an outlet with an interviewer who will apologize if he asks any awkward questions. After the Oilers signed Martin Gerber on Friday, I had an exchange with him that Jonathan Willis summarized over at Coppernblue.com in which I chided him for being so clueless as to the potential consequences to Khabibulin if he gets convicted. The tweet that started it all was Tencer saying “Too many cases of people doing worse and getting no jail time or flexible sentences…” which, as has been extensively covered in the mainstream media in Edmonton, let alone the alternative media that cover the Oilers, isn’t true in Arizona.

Anyway, Dan has come up with a post at 630 CHED to defend himself. He hasn’t bothered to link to me or anything, so I figured I’d Fisk it and then go drop a note in his comments so that his readers can see the other side of the story.

It was brought to my attention by a friend last night that I’ve been taking some heat on a couple of blogs that correctly surmise my lack of readership. The criticism, as I’ve now read, stems from a back-and-forth with one of the writers who has devoted a flattering amount of time for a number of years to assessing my work (he might use another word) in relation to the Oilers. Let’s see if we can get on the same page here, with the help of some perspective and, yes, a mea culpa.

Two big mistakes in this paragraph:

1. First sentence: As of the time that he wrote this, he was only “taking heat” on Coppernblue.

2. Second sentence: I don’t write for Coppernblue.

I think that Dan’s assessment that I’ve devoted a “flattering amount of time for a number of years to assessing [his] work” is off, although that’s a matter of opinion. As to why he’s come to that conclusion, it may be because he thinks that I write everything that is on the internet.

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I heard a rumour today that Oilers assistant GM Rick Olczyk made the following comment about the Oilers’ plans with respect to Khabibulin’s contract:

“He was our MVP until the point that he got hurt, and his injury affected us, no question. Walking away from the contract? No. I have the utmost confidence that he’s going to bounce back and have a phenomenal year. He’s going to keep our guys in the game, give our guys a chance to win, because they’re going to be young and they’re going to make some mistakes back there. He’s a great person, he’s made a mistake and he’s going to learn from it. He’s a better person than he was six months ago.”

Don Iveson should add another question to his list: “To what degree are your claimed financial losses due to having the stupidest management group in the NHL?” Khabibulin’s age and surgery reduce the chances that he’s going to be the Oilers’ MVP next year. The whole point of MVP is that it takes into account an extended period of time. Why not say that JFJ was the MVP of the four shifts where he scored goals last year and bring him back for another year despite the fact that he’s completely usele…oh.

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This looks to me like it would be an extraordinarily fun case to work on. I’ll keep an eye open for the Statement of Claim and link to it when it becomes available.

Two prominent Toronto law firms are heading up a class-action lawsuit in connection with the G20 summit.

Murray Klippenstein, who is heading up the case along with lawyer Eric Gillespie, wouldn’t say who is being named as defendants in the suit. But a statement released Thursday afternoon said there are more than 800 individuals covered, all of whom “were allegedly wrongfully arrested during the G20 summit at various locations, and never charged with any wrongdoing.”

The really interesting part is that, if it’s pleaded properly, Klippenstein and Gillespie will have access to all sorts of internal police material in terms of orders as well as the right to examine anyone whom they name as a defendant and ask them questions about it. For example, if they plead something along the lines of “Commanding officers ordered that the officers ‘kettle’ and arrest all persons in the vicinity, without regard to whether or not they had lawful authority to arrest any of those persons” (or something along those lines; I’m not drafting anything here), they’ll be permitted to bring the defendants in under oath and ask them questions about it.

I’ve commented to friends that, given my interest in how this happened, I’d love to be involved in a case like this because you’ll get to learn what really happened without having the media ask questions that don’t really go to the issue that whoever is on the other end is under no obligation to answer. Unfortunately for those of us who aren’t party to the litigation, we won’t get to know anything though because of a rule that prevents parties to litigation from disclosing anything obtained during the discovery process. The only way it should get out is if there’s a motion that requires the filing of transcripts or documentation. This happened in the Moore v. Bertuzzi et al. case, with all sorts of fun stuff coming out. An interested observer can dream, I guess…

I did a quickie post last summer on the ESS/60 of the Oilers’ forwards that I thought I’d update now.

For those who don’t know, this is an astoundingly repeatable metric. Drops in shot production like that suffered by Penner and Nilsson are not usual. I think that the chart kind of gives you a fair sense of it - you can see that this stuff generally operates within a pretty narrow realm. The fact that it’s Penner and Nilsson made me wonder a little bit if perhaps the coach was on to something about those two and their levels of conditioning (Penner) or effort (Nilsson). It’s intriguing to me that two of the guys who clearly aggravated him the most had significant drops in a number that repeats pretty readily…

It will be interesting to watch and see what kind of numbers these fellows put up this year. I’m not inclined to blame the coach for their failings - you get less leeway when you look out of shape and if Robert Nilsson really added 15 pounds this summer, hopefully some of that was in the form of balls - but some improvement from those guys would probably do wonders in terms of moving the team forward.

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One of my potential nightmares in my day job is advising a client of mine not to take some offer, having the offer pulled and then ending up with the client end up in a worse position. I wonder if that’s just happened to Bill Zito, agent for Hawks goalie Antti Niemi.

Niemi got a $2.75MM award in arbitration. The Blackhawks decided to walk away from it and announced at the same time that they were signing Marty Turco, who wants his chance at a Stanley Cup ring. Stan Bowman also said, in passing, that he’d offered a multi-year deal to Niemi, something that Zito denied.

The pickings are rather slim at this point. The following teams, as far as I can tell, don’t already have two goalies on one way deals: Dallas (Andrew Raycroft is on a two way deal this year), Nashville (only Pekka Rinne is signed) and Washington (both Semyon Varlamov and Michael Neuvirth are on two way deals). You can probably add the Islanders to that, as they look for insurance against Rick DiPietro’s leg being amputated.

That’s not a lot of jobs though. He’s not going to get a multi year deal for significant dollars in any of those cities, I wouldn’t think. It’s questionable whether he’s even good enough to start in any of those cities - his numbers last year are pretty underwhelming except in the Stanley Cup column. If he gets a job somewhere, he’ll have to earn the starting job, rather than being the presumptive number one. He won’t get any term. His win totals and other numbers will take a hit not playing behind the Blackhawks and he’ll probably be a free agent again next year.

This is, I think, a curious decision. If I’d been his agent - and for all I know, Bill Zito was telling him this - I would have recommended pushing the Hawks as hard and as far as possible but by no means does it go to the arbitrator and give them a chance at an out. Another year to put up lots of wins, hopefully another couple of playoff rounds, the Huet contract another year closer to finishing…maybe Chicago has some money available next year.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. It wouldn’t surprise me if, three years from now, Niemi is gone from the league, never to be seen in North America again.

Some interesting news on the Khabibulin front today, as it came out that he’s taking a trial by judge alone at the end of August instead of a jury trial that was tentatively scheduled for late September. His lawyer had previously indicated a preference for a jury trial but indicated that he would have to speak to the Oilers first.

A couple of things. It’s much easier to schedule trials with judge alone - juries slow everything down, so I’d bet the trial goes. I’m more interested in divining the Oilers’ position in all of this. I think we can safely assume that they told Khabibulin one of two things: either “We’re not going to cut you, just get the trial done with and serve your thirty days before the season” or “We offer you no advice in that regard and we reserve our rights fully.” I think that they can terminate his contract if he doesn’t show up at training camp because he’s in jail; that’s my reading of the Standard Player’s Contract anyway. Similarly, if he had an unexcused absence from training camp or an exhibition game for his trial, they might be able to cut him.

By going this route, Khabibulin preserves the possibility of missing no time because of his trial, the only situation in which he isn’t in jeopardy. If he ends up getting convicted, it’s going to be fascinating to see how the Oilers respond. Maybe, if they do cut him, Don Iveson can amend his list of questions to ask if the City’s financial contribution can be cut by $12MM to represent the savings on the Khabibulin deal.